Flash Fic Challenge: Let Us See

 Let Us See

Adam flattens himself into the field of lettuce and creeps closer, inch by muddy inch, to the house beside it where the forgers have their press hidden. He just needs to get close enough to see everything. All the entrances and exits. Where the guards stand and what routes they take. What vehicles come and go along the rough track.

Adam is no warrior, no fighter, only a scout doing reconnaissance. But the information he brings back - yesterday's and today's and tomorrow's - will be vital for the fighting team that goes in soon.

He flattens himself further, moves slower, ducks his head down so that the paler oval of his face doesn't give him away.

There's a new guard, standing where there was a gap in the fence yesterday. Adam hardly dares breathe, but his fingers ever so slowly ease an elastic band out of the box in his pocket.

When the guard looks away, Adam stretches the band between his hands and fires. The band strikes a brick on the far edge of the house, with a soft and muffled plink, but it's enough to get the guard's attention and send him away from Adam.

Adam waits, frozen, for a long moment, and then, inch by inch, starts moving again. He needs a new vantage point.

Flash Fic Challenge: Time to Run

 Time To Run

Tkkia skidded to a halt and stretched out an arm to kir human companion. His two legs hadn't been able to keep up with kir six legs. "Get on my back," ke told him. "Hang on to my thorax."

Joe scrambled up and hung on with on hand, the other clutching a jagged metal hoop. Their precious stolen cargo was in a bag slung across his body. "I'm on. Go!"

Tkkia took off again, racing down the corridors of the queen's palace, listening for the staccatto steps of the pursuing guards. Ke was merely a lowly worker, was never supposed to be in this place to begin with, but even the palace was a nest, and nests always had a certain logic to them.

Ke turned a corner that should lead to the outside, and found guards storming up the cross corridor. Fear made kir stumble, and Joe leaned down and sent the metal ring sliding, points uppermost, across the floor towards the guards.

Tkkia recovered and lunged forward, fleeing for the door.

Behind them, there was a snap and then a hideous scream.

"What was that?"

Joe chuckled. "We call it a bear trap. Let's get out of here before they escape."

"Good idea," Tkkia muttered back, and made the idea reality.

Flash Fic Challenge: Golden Goose

 Golden Goose

Sam pelted down the storm drain as fast as e could go, eyes peeled for the opening to the sewer itself. Spotting it at last, e slowed just enough to lower emself down, feeling with eir feet for the ledge. It was narrow, and damp with the stinking, sloshing, dregs of the sewer water and e scuttled along the memorised route.

Somewhere along here there should be a suitcase containing the spare radio to contact eir bosses - if e could find it before the hounds caught up with em. E glanced back over eir shoulder, ears pricked for the telltale cry of discovery, and then hurried on.

E had to get the information through - and hope that the traitor didn't intercept it. Only then would Upstairs know where, and when, and how to target their precision strike.

The suitcase, when e found it wedged into a tiny hole, was intact, as was the radio and the coding pages. Sam took a moment to catch eir breath, and then hurried on, finally clambering up through a manhole, and along a different storm drain into the cellar of a wrecked safehouse.

Eir fingers shook as e set it all up for contact, and e scrubbed grimly at eir tear-streaked face. Once this was done the hounds would probably catch em and tear em down like the rest of eir cell. Like the rest of eir friends. E had survived the last attack only by sheer luck, and luck like that couldn't last.

E took a breath, calmed emself, coded the message with steadier hands, and opened the channel. "Goose reporting in. Message is as follows..."